


Tonight we're all believers

by jjjat3am



Category: Almost Human
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 02:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2755406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/pseuds/jjjat3am
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has a crush. Dorian is utterly clueless. </p>
<p>Turns out that all it takes is a little bit of Christmas cheer to bring them together</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tonight we're all believers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Almost Human Advent Calendar 2014](http://mxmas2014.tumblr.com/)

 

The first hint he gets that something is off, is when he comes out of the MX facilities and John is already waiting. Dorian starts to immediately sift through surveillance cameras of John’s route to the precinct, monitoring for suspicious activity, because John is never on time, unless there’s some sort of crisis they’re dealing with and in that case Dorian wants to be prepared.

 

“You’re early,” Dorian says, countering John’s frown with one of his sweetest smiles. He starts monitoring John’s body functions automatically. Everything seems fine, except for the jump in John’s pulse right after Dorian smiles, but that’s probably because of the group of MX passing their location right at that moment. John really hates those things.

 

“Yeah, well, maybe you’re late, have you considered that?” John snipes defensively, marching away and leaving Dorian standing in the corridor, frozen in surprise.

 

Strange, John isn’t usually this catty in the mornings. Maybe his painkillers aren’t working well enough? The subtle information broadcast from John’s prosthetic isn’t showing anything unusual, the joints much easier now that John is using olive oil.

 

So Dorian jogs after him in silence and gets in the car right before John drives off without him. He carefully modifies the radio, so it’s playing all the songs John likes, then goads him into a few stupid arguments until John relaxes. By the time they arrive on their crime scene, everything seems to be back to normal.

 

Still, Dorian puts his observations into the ‘To-watch’ folder instead of his cloud storage, just in case John is ‘accidentally’ hiding a serious illness from him. For a usually fairly transparent guy, John can be very good a keeping secrets from Dorian.

 

*

 

They have to come back to the station after apprehending the suspect, deal with paperwork and report to the captain. The criminal didn’t go down lightly and there were a few shots fired, but ultimately no one was harmed, except for Dorian’s jacket and the skin underneath. Rudy fixed the synthetic skin quickly enough, the only problem was that the lady at the supplies office took one look at Dorian in his tight tank top and immediately declared that  _“they’d run out of jackets and shirts and all articles of clothing”_ , and that  _“it was a big emergency, so would Dorian be very bothered if he had to walk around just the way he was all day?”_

 

It’s quite a strange statement, especially with how she has a stack of unopened shirts right behind her, but it’s not like Dorian is affected by changes of temperature, so he just nods and smiles, and tries to ignore the way the officer braces herself against the countertop as if it’s the only thing holding her upright.

 

As Dorian walks through the hallways to his desk, he notices that everyone at the Precinct seem to be unusually clumsy today. The IT lady drops a stack of papers as soon as she sees him and doesn’t even move to pick them up until he passes by. Valerie stumbles over her own feet and stutters out an answer to his greeting. Richard walks into the water cooler.

 

John doesn’t actually react to his presence when he comes to their desk except for a distracted grunt, but it’s not long ( _3 minutes 42 seconds…_ ) until he looks up and does a double take.

 

“Where the hell are your clothes?” And John sounds so shocked and hostile, that Dorian, already unsettled by the looks of the rest of the Precinct, immediately frowns.

 

“I am wearing clothes,” he replies coolly. “I just won’t be able to get a new jacket until tomorrow. I don’t see how it’s an issue.”

 

John just mutters something to himself and goes back to his files. Dorian sighs, connecting to one of the MX databases to begin the grueling task of going through all the surveillance footage of the day.

 

It isn’t long until he notices how John’s attention seems to be straying from his reports and the way he keeps licking his lips. It’s worrying. Dorian briefly abandons his task to do a quick database search. John’s blood sugar was fine the last time Dorian checked, so it can’t be diabetes, but when he thinks back through the day, he realizes that John probably hadn’t drank anything since that morning and that he must be thirsty.

 

So Dorian gets up and walks to the water cooler (Captain Maldonado chokes on her coffee in the office) and brings John a glass of water. It’s a peace offering of sorts, because he knows that John will be intolerable for the rest of the day if his mood persists. The sacrifices he makes for this man, honestly.

 

When he sets the glass in front of him, John spends exactly five minutes glaring at it before he finally drinks it. He stops licking his lips and Dorian hides his grin behind his tablet.

 

The peace doesn’t last though. Almost exactly half an hour later ( _28 minutes 59 seconds_ ), John’s attention starts wandering again and he resumes licking his lips. The pattern is always the same. His gaze will move somewhere vaguely over Dorian’s shoulder and he’ll stare intensely for a while, glassy-eyed and licking his lips, before abruptly shaking himself and resuming work. Rinse and repeat.

 

After an hour of this, Dorian gets up to get him another glass of water.

 

This repeats several times during the course of the day. The water cooler loses four liters worth of water. John’s bladder now features prominently in his curses.

 

“If you hadn’t brought me all that water, this wouldn’t be happening!” John accuses him on the fourth trip.

 

“Well, you didn’t have to drink it all,” Dorian says, holding on to his tattered willpower to keep the grin from breaking out across his face. “You should have given some to your plant, it looks a bit wilted. You didn’t have to be so greedy.”

 

It’s true, the plant on John’s desk does look a little wilted. It’s actually plastic, but he isn’t sure that John knows that.

 

Dorian returns to his work, trying not to feel exposed under the gaze of one of the detectives that’s passing by their desk. It’s just that, the same detective has passed their space six times now and Dorian is beginning to feel uncomfortable.

 

His musings are interrupted when he realizes that he’s suddenly wearing a lot more clothes than he was previously. He reaches up to steady the jacket that’s threatening to slip off his broad shoulders and stares at John’s back incredulously. The jacket he’s wearing is one of John’s extra ones that he keeps in the locker rooms as a change of clothes.

 

“Thank you.” Dorian says, and John grumbles something in return about how maybe Dorian will stop distracting the whole Precinct now, which is strange, because Dorian hasn’t been aware of distracting anyone. But the way John is pointedly glaring at the rest of the staff does make them avert their eyes and Dorian breathes a sigh of relief.

 

It’s a while longer before Dorian gets back to work. The synthetic leather of the jacket is soft under his touch sensors and the jacket is heavier than he’d thought it would be. It smells like John and more faintly of olive oil. It also makes him feel oddly warm, and not from the temperature.

 

*

 

It’s just a routine maintenance check. Fix his external port to the prosthetic’s sensors, then a quick sweep through the code and a manual check of the joint mechanism. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes, probably even less, because Dorian is nothing if not efficient.

 

Or he would be, if John would let him touch him.

 

“It doesn’t need any maintenance! It works fine!” John says, from where he’s standing on the other side of Rudy’s lab, acting more like a trapped animal than a police officer with ten years on the force.

 

The leg chooses that moment to emit a high pitched whine. Dorian raises his eyebrow.

 

“It can wait for Rudy,” John relents and Dorian frowns, feeling more than a little hurt.

 

“Look, Rudy is busy, and it’ll be much quicker if I do it anyway. You’re acting like I’m trying to molest you!”

 

“Fine!”

 

John folds himself petulantly in the examination chair, sticking out his prosthetic leg at an angle Dorian knows he won’t be able to hold for long.

 

He moves closer, laying his hand right above the seam that connects John’s leg to the prosthetic. The connection process goes smoothly, as it should. The leg he gave to John was top of the line.

 

As he focuses his programs to run the diagnostic, he becomes aware of something unexpected; John has a fever. Not only that, but his cheeks are turning crimson and his heart rate has picked up. Dorian frowns to himself, logging into one of the MX databases, trying to figure out what might be wrong.

 

By the end of the process he’s got his answer.

 

“We should stop by the Precinct’s doctor before we head out,” Dorian says, trying to keep his tone deliberately light as to not let on how worried he is.

 

“What? Why? Is there something wrong with my leg?” John asks, swinging his legs onto the floor and testing it.

 

“No, it’s not that,” Dorian says. “I think you’re sick.”

 

“What?”

 

Rudy chooses that moment to walk into his lab, weighted down by his tool box and what looks eerily like an MX head.

 

“What’s going on here?” Rudy asks, looking back and forth between them.

 

“John is sick,” Dorian turns his pleading eyes on Rudy, causing him to take a step back and almost trip over some cables.

 

“I am not!”

 

“You are! Your heart rate is elevated and I’m pretty sure you have a fever!”

 

“What the hell are you on about!?”

 

While they bicker, Rudy deposits his things calmly on a table and walks towards John to put a hand on his forehead. John is in the middle of calling Dorian a ‘damn meddling android’ and so doesn’t even notice at first.

 

“He feels fine to me,” Rudy says. “When did you start seeing these symptoms?”

 

“As soon as I touched him,” Dorian says from where he’s still glaring at John. “His face started turning red, and my diagnostics sensed an immediate 23 % increase in body temperature and an elevated heartbeat rate.”

 

Rudy bursts out laughing, while John splutters. Dorian has no idea what the joke is supposed to be. The MX database usually offers consistent, if often incomplete data and it’s much easier to access when he’s on a lower charge. He doesn’t appreciate being made fun of.

 

Then the MX head on the table explodes in a shower of sparks, effectively derailing the oncoming awkward moment.

 

*

 

Dorian was more than a little proud to be invited to the Precinct’s annual Christmas party and had pestered John until he’s promised they’d go. Though, looking around at all the detectives swaying across the dance floor in various stages of drunkenness, he was beginning to regret his enthusiasm.

 

He’d left John deep in conversation with the Captain an hour ago, in favor of a poker game with Valerie and Richard, which Valerie unsurprisingly won. But now the evening is winding down, and he’s standing by the wall like some sort of MX, eyeing the multitude of Christmas decorations around him with trepidation.

 

His risk assessment program is in full swing already, calculating the likelihood of the over-laden Christmas tree falling over, pulling down the LED lights right into the punch bowl, spiked with a large quantity of rum…

 

“Well, look who’s playing the wallflower,” John leans against the wall next to him, a glass of scotch in his hands. “I thought you were excited about the party?”

 

Dorian has a reply on the tip of his tongue, when a loud gasp from the other side of the room interrupts him.

 

“Mistletoe!” Richard screams and points in their direction, causing everyone to turn and stare at them. Dorian follows their gazes upwards, where a small green plant is hanging innocently.

 

“Kiss him!” Comes a call from the crowd and it sounds suspiciously like Captain Maldonado-

 

Dorian has no idea what mistletoe is and what it has to do with kissing, but a cursory database search explains it well enough. He turns to John, ready to make a joke out of it, or to suggest a diversion, but it becomes immediately apparent that something else is going on.

 

John is blushing a dark red, his heartbeat is clearly elevated and his eyes keep dropping down to watch Dorian’s lips, after which he licks his lips and things just…click. Dorian is embarrassed that he hasn’t seen it earlier, but that’ll teach him to go searching through the MX databases when it comes to human matters.

 

The chant has since reached all the party-goers and Dorian figures that they might as well do something, because otherwise they’ll get the police called on them from all the noise they’re making (which would be ironic, because they are the police…)

 

So he does the only thing he can think of; leans forward to press his lips against John’s cheek.

 

He can feel the roughness of the stubble underneath the pressure sensors on his lips, as well as the warmth of it from John’s blush. His scent sensors are trying to read the content of John’s surprised exhale and his research programs are working overtime to compare the image of them he’s taking off the surveillance camera with pictures of famous cheek kisses from history, just to make sure that Dorian is doing it right.

 

None of that explains why Dorian feels curiously speechless when he pulls away, and inexplicably warmed by the way John had leaned into the kiss for the briefest of moments.

 

The attention moves off them, effectively monopolized by Rudy tripping into the eggnog (he might be doing it on purpose and Dorian is grateful) and they stare at each other in shocked silence, the offending plant still hanging above them.

 

“You could have just said something, you know.” Dorian finally breaks the silence.

 

“Yeah, well, you thought I was sick because I was blushing! I can’t help it if I blush easily, okay!”

 

“Granted, not my most shining moment,” Dorian grins. “But you could have at least given me a hint. Asked me out on a date or something.”

 

“You don’t even eat,” John grumbles, but Dorian can see the smile twitching in the corner of his lips.

 

“It’s the principle of the thing. I don’t want you to think I’m easy.”

 

And if they duck into a barely used hallway closet later on, it’s certainly not because Dorian is easy, but rather more because Dorian thinks John’s blush is charming. It’s not the last time they make use of that particular closet.

 

Dorian pretends not to notice when John unhooks the mistletoe from its place on their way out.

 

He certainly doesn’t object when John cites it as an excuse to pull him closer in the car.

 


End file.
